Monthly Anime Music Ramblings – May 2012 – Nana Mizuki

Well, it’s almost the end of April and with that, it’s time to share my thoughts on some Anime related music. This time, I’m focusing my attention on a popular voice actress and singer, Nana Mizuki. (Image Source)
Quite surprisingly, I haven’t heard any of her songs until I started watching Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Even so, I always skip the opening/ending and therefore, I never got a chance to experience her singing. It’s not until I decided to take some time and listen to some of her tracks. After several listens, her singing amazed me and she quickly became one of my favorite artists.

While Nana Mizuki voiced several characters in Anime, she is mostly known for her singing talents, perhaps in the same way Mayaa Sakamoto focuses mostly on music. Before she got into voice acting, she received training for enka (演歌, a popular Japanese song, which is full of melancholy) when she was five years old and debuted in 1998. She remained unnoticed until she took the role as Fate Testarossa. This is when her career took off. Since then, she won many awards for her singing and became the first voice actress to hit number one on the Oricon Weekly single charts.

Since then, she sung numerous openings and endings for anime, especially for some that she stared in. From this, I want to reflect on the opening of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, “Innocent Starter,” the opening she sang for the show that started it all.

Innocent Starter

Opening from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

The song starts off with a nostalgic feeling through the gentle synth and percussion. It eventually builds throughout the song with guitars and bass, which blend in nicely. However, that is not the only reason why I liked this song. Her performance of it is what made it a pleasurable experience. Her voice sounded unique as she has a sweet voice that tends to be a bit lower in comparison to others. This is what ultimately contributes to most of the energy of this song, especially at 1:00-1:34 and 2:33 to the end of the song, which I really enjoyed. Her ability to put a lot of emotion in various songs while maintaining the same level of performance through her vocal talents makes them sound amazing. However, she had a few missteps when singing songs outside her usual style, although it’s not bad by any means.

Of course, this is not the only song she sung that I shared my thoughts on. Last summer, I also liked “Scarlet Knight,” which is the opening for Dog Days. Yeah the anime itself was questionable, but I really liked how the song felt. But still, I think “Phantom Minds” (the ending song for the Nanoha Movie) took the position as my favorite song from her, although there are others that I liked.

Aside from that, I will share some reflections on some summer themed songs next month. So, look forward to it! ¶

I haven’t heard her latest song, but there are other songs that I kind of enjoyed besides the one mentioned in my post and Scarlet Knight… Also, the songs she did for the Nanoha movie was great and I wonder what she will sing for the second one that supposed to release this summer.

Her Nanoha stuff has always been pretty top notch those she’s been a bit hit or miss elsewhere. I still have her ranked pretty highly in terms of consistency, both in terms of live performances as well as the stuff she’s done in anime. Also, is it just me, or does she do best when she gets paired up with an Elements Garden composer?

Finally, if you ever find a copy, do listen to her singing when she was younger. Some of her enka performances as a youngster are all kinds of fantastic, cementing her as an actual talent rather than someone with just a pretty face!

I think this is probably why and I think the composer also contributes how good the song is. It’s funny tha you bring up Elements Garden as Scarlet Knight was probably composed by them (or rather, they worked on most of the music for Dog Days). Purity Paradox was ok, but not nearly as good.